ABSTRACT
Introduction: Most previous studies have investigated consumer purchasing behavior for food products in urban areas during the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, the present study is one of the very few to investigate consumer purchasing behavior for food products within rural areas. Methods: To this end, research was conducted in Sicily taking as a case study a rural municipality whose population was subjected to a lockdown regime to contain the spread of the virus. The choice of carrying out the research in a rural rather than an urban area contributed to the emergence of new aspects concerning consumer behavior in rural areas during the COVID-19 emergency. Results and discussion: The research reveals that the amount of money spent on food purchases, as well as the amount of food purchased, increased during the lockdown. In general, the research shows that COVID-19 impacted the purchasing behavior of consumers in rural areas even though they showed a high resilience and adaptation to the health emergency situation caused by the pandemic. Copyright © 2022 Pappalardo, Selvaggi, Pittalà and Bellia.
ABSTRACT
The agrifood supply chain is one of the largest in the world and includes all the businesses aimed at the production, processing, distribution and sale of products. The purpose of this article is to clearly explain what the blockchain technology really is, how it performs and whether it can really help our agriculture. It seems particularly useful to bring a knowledge support to institutional operators, agricultural enterprises, rural communities, activists, in the belief that it is essential to introduce in the current and future debate a critical vision that remains open to comparison and observation of the evolution of the 4.0 revolution that has just begun. In this context, blockchain technology can play an important role in the exchange of goods and services, which allows to democratize the procurement process, thus making the relationship between small farmers and large buyers more equitable. The objective of the research is to analyze which scenarios will benefit most from the implementation of blockchain in the citrus chain. The multi-criteria indices are representative of the variability in the citrus supply chain based on confirmed trends is safety, security, and traceability in the overall process for orange juice, from fruit to bottle. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.